Should you be feeling jaded and in need of an injection of zest, a trip to the splendidly misnamed Bibis Italianissimo in Leeds is urged. I'd be astounded if you enjoyed it in any but the most kitschily ironic of ways, but I'd be more amazed if you didn't depart with your appetite for life refreshed. Bidding farewell to this transcendently bizarre restaurant was like leaving the surgery after the doctor's assurance that the right gonad was uncancerous. The experience hadn't been huge fun, but the indignity felt a tiny price to pay for the joy of having it in the past.

Regardless of its owner's origins and a menu featuring dishes from his homeland, Bibis really ought to expand its name to Italianissimo My Arse. What precisely it is is less easy to decide, surreal being too broad a term for a place that brings the ersatz glitz of the outsized Las Vegas cocktail lounge to a site abutting a car park. But there's no questioning its size. Said to serve 4,000 covers a week, which must make it one of the most popular eateries in Britain, this is the largest restaurant even my father, who is older than me, has ever seen. You could park a fleet of 777s in here, but do fit them with transponders first or you may never find them again amid all the cut-price chandeliers, fake marble, huge pot plants, vast red curtains and gigantic tellies.

A colossal central bar fights for attention with a stage on which tribute acts perform at Bibis Showtime. The bad news is that we've missed The Rat Pack Are Back, in which Frank and Dean were reunited with someone listed as Sammy David Jnr. Happily, there's still time to book for Abba Revival on 14 April, though I'd advise anyone tempted to do so to eat elsewhere first. Even the presence on the Italianissimo menu of "poached duck egg with black pudding" offered no warning (not that HazYuk would have cut it, either). My spaghetti with spicy meatballs, served within two minutes of being ordered, was a Room 101 dish in which sub-Buitoni pasta, limp as if it had been hanging around waiting for a kettle to revive it, bore the weight of nasty, overcooked spheres of unidentifiable meat. If this was justa lika mamma useda make, you'd be better off with Medea as a mamma.

As for my father, only his exquisite good manners when dining out (apologies to advocates of nurture over nature for that blow) can explain his "not bad, not bad. Not good, no, but…" about his involtini – two duck-filled rolls with a spicy orange sauce presumably based on an old Aldo Zilli recipe for industrial solvent. A familiar twang combined with the speed of their arrival to beg a question. "Microwaved?" I asked our waiter. "Mmm," he reluctantly confirmed. Revoltini.

It is testament to my dad's good nature that, despite having tasted my starter and winced, he refused to change his main course. The reward for this politesse was a bowl of spaghetti frutti di mare that, though technically edible in a Dolmioissimo kinda way (the spag seemed to have been freshly boiled this time, so progress there), made us sad that a langoustine, some prawns and a few mussels had given their lives for it.

My veal al limone also showed improvement, the lemon sauce being only slightly oversalted and the meat – although tasteless, overcooked and chewy – recognisably bovine. Zucchini had been deep fried in stale oil, while the best to be said of the spinach was that someone had gone that extra mile down Michelin Boulevard by thawing it out.

We finished with an almost adequate affogato, which reminds me that affogato say that the house red, a shiraz, removed any doubt as to why Majestic seldom stocks vinegarised blackcurrant juice.

In the curious absence of flashing neon arrows towards the exit, it took us a while to escape this cheap and cheerless temple to crazed vulgarity. Eventually, though, like Elvis (The King Is Back, by the way, on 21 April), we did leave the building, and the explosion of relief made the ride home a riot of merriment of a kind unknown to this family in 30 years.